The Armchair Empire - Anime Reviews: GTO Volume 9


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Great Teacher Onizuka

Volume 9 (DVD)

The last episode of Volume 8 is the setup for the entirety of Volume 9 (and some of Volume 10). Volume 9 takes us on the much-awaited field trip to Okinawa.

If you’re like me you probably have a preconceived idea about what a field trip is. This is no day trip to a zoo or museum, Onizuka takes the school to a luxury resort for days -- long enough for Onizuka to get himself (and anyone in close proximity) into a load of trouble.

But first, Episode 36 follows Fuyutsuki as she prepares for the trip, which boils down to buying a bathing suit and attempting to make her bust look bigger. It’s no secret to anyone that has seen the previous volumes that Fuyutsuki has a thing for Onizuka. And Onizuka has a thing for breasts, which Fuyutski has very little of. Once she addresses the breast issue (inflatable!) she goes on a horrific cosmetology journey with disastrous results, which aren’t fully revealed until she arrives at school to make the journey to the resort -- to the shock of the student body.

Onizuka wastes no time in mixing things up upon arrival at the resort. He gets hold of the room assignments and completely explodes them, mixing girls and boys together. The vice principal thinks he finally has Onizuka in a position to be fired and girl genius Urumi gets a comeuppance of her own when she’s roomed with

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three Gundam fans and she has no idea what they’re talking about. Yoshikawa is roomed with the three girls that were bullying him at the start of the series. (If you don’t remember, he attempted suicide after the constant bullying. Onizuka rescued him and destroyed the vice principals Cresta in one shot.) This creates an uncomfortable tension, but leave it to Onizuka to set the ball rolling for a little revenge.

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Onizuka gets a treasure hunting bug in Episode 38 and suddenly he’s off on an unapproved field trip of his own -- his students brought along to dig up the treasure. But there’s a mutiny led by Urumi, still smarting from not being abe to understand what her roommates are saying. At the same time Anko and her two henchwomen plan to leave Yoshikawa stranded on the island by tying him up and leaving him in the middle of nowhere. Things go wrong when all four get lost and Yoshikawa and Anko fall into a blow hole -- it’s a real cliff-hanger of an ending.

No one has died in an episode of GTO so you know things will work out in the end, but Episode 39 really raises the specter that two characters -- Yoshikawa and Anko -- will die. It turns out to be the Vice Principal and Onizuka that come closest to harms way -- Onizuka taking on an unexploded munitions from World War II, which finally puts the nail in the coffin of his treasure hunting.

It’s still amazing that GTO can move between seriousness and comedy at the drop of a hat. It’s not always a comfortable switch, but part of that is owed to Onizuka’s innate likeability and his ability to avoid death.

We close Episode 39 with a sense of foreboding (even as we laugh) -- not because of what happens at the conclusion, but the knowledge that the next Volume is GTO’s last.

- Omni

(September 26, 2003)